Inside the Trauma Bond: Why I Couldn’t Leave (and How I Finally Did)

I’m sharing the truth about a trauma bond I was in—how it formed, why I stayed, and what it took to finally break free. This isn’t a highlight reel or a neatly packaged story. It’s the messy reality of living in a cycle of harm and hope, of being pulled in and pushed away, of mistaking control for care.

If you’ve ever been asked, “Why didn’t you just leave?”—or asked yourself the same thing—I want you to know this episode isn’t about shame. It’s about understanding. It’s about the hooks that keep you tied to someone who hurts you, the ways your nervous system gets rewired to see pain as love, and the hope that becomes the glue keeping you in place.

I’ll walk you through the moments I clung to, the patterns I couldn’t see until I was out, and the shift that finally allowed me to step away. My hope is that by the end, you’ll see yourself more clearly—whether you’re still in it, rebuilding after it, or trying to make sense of it years later.